The two sides of federal court case United States of America v. Martine Tavakoli filed sentencing memorandums Sept. 10 that proposed different punishments for the theft of money from the Washington College of Law.
Tavakoli, a former WCL employee, pleaded guilty May 20 to stealing nearly $400,000-worth of checks made out to AU law journals over a period of six years. Tavakoli will be sentenced in a public hearing on Sept. 22 with U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Tavakoli faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The prosecution recommended Tavakoli be jailed for 18 to 24 months, with restitution of the stolen money.
The defense, however, asked the judge to consider Tavakoli’s 16-year-old daughter and sentence Tavakoli to house arrest with electronic monitoring in the defense’s memorandum. The memorandum from the defense did not detail how long Tavakoli should be kept under house arrest but did say she agreed to pay back the stolen money.
The defense’s memorandum went on to detail Tavakoli’s life and the context of her theft.
(Click here to read the prosecution's sentencing memorandum. Click here to read the defense's sentencing memorandum.)
Tavakoli, now 50, began working at the AU Law Review, a student-run legal journal, in 1981, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
She was married to an abusive Iranian national, whom Tavakoli has not seen since 2006, when she thinks he returned to Iran.
In 1998, the year she was promoted to the position of coordinator of the law journals, she brought home checks that were mainly subscription fees and royalty checks. Her husband saw the checks and suggested she take them for their use, according to the sentencing memorandum.
In September of that year, she opened a new bank account under the joint name “AULR c/o Martine Tavakoli.” She used the AU taxpayer identification number and her own home address at a branch of SunTrust Bank in McLean, Va., The Eagle previously reported.
Tavakoli then started depositing checks from the law journals into that bank account for her own personal access and use.
The theft continued until 2009, three years after her husband left. The memorandum said Tavakoli cannot fully explain why she continued, but she was still trying to support her two daughters and pay rent on a house in McLean, that she could not afford on her salary alone.
She is currently working for Beta Court Reporting as a production assistant, a job from home that makes $12 an hour.
Tavakoli says she suffers from depression and is currently taking anxiety medication, but she cannot afford prescribed anti-depressants.
U.S. District Judge Friedman will decide Tavakoli’s sentence this Wednesday.
sdazio@theeagleonline.com
